Beyond Reason
“Beyond Reason: Works from the Prinzhorn Collection”
Dr. Han Prinzhorn described the works that are “productions of pictorial art by mental patients, which are not simply copies of existing images or memories of their days of health, but intended as expressions of their personal experience.”
Most patients in the psychiatric hospitals were diagnosed as”Bementia praecox” which is premature imbecility, in modern terms, is schizophrenia. Most patients were suffered from prolonged confinement so the art works are their response of hospitalization and sickness. Prinzhorn point out the art work as a result of: 1) Abandonment of direct apperception of the world. 2) Devaluation of outward appearances. 3) Concentration on the self.
Emma Hauck
Born Ellwangen, 1878,died wiesloch (asylum), 1928
Diagnisis: Dementia praecox
Sweetheart Come (Letter to husband), 1909
Marie Lieb
Recorded Heidelberg (asylum), 1894
Diagnosis: periodic mania
Cell floor decorated with torn strips of cloth,
1894
Born Mannheim-Kafertal, 1884
Last mentioned Mannheim, 1935
Occupation: gardener/farmer, hawker
Religion: Catholic
Diagnosis: dementia praecox paranoides
Proofs, c.1910